Are people in /r/fatpeoplehate psychopaths?

/r/fatpeoplehate/ is an unsettling picture of the kinds of thoughts that race through the heads of not just the 45,000 subscribers to the sub but of thousands and millions of people whose path cross yours and each others.

The sub is a place for people to expose the part of them that you don't see in real life because most shitlords are actually polite. When a fatty hogs our airplane seat and makes us sit halfway in the aisle for a five hour flight, we suffer and seethe in silence. And then we come on /r/fatpeoplehate/ and rant and rave.

The fact is that a hate reddit has to be sought by people. I got into it with a hamplanet the other day on /r/amiugly/ for bitching that people (such as me) were being mean for telling her the truth. Look kid, when you come to /r/amiugly/ and you hear "Yes", what the hell were you expecting?

So let's say you're fat and you arrive on /r/fatpeoplehate/ and you read a rant about how some giant fat fuck took up a shitlord's airplane seat so much that only one of his butt cheeks could fit on the seat for 5 straight hours and it "triggers" you or whatever stupid terminology you're using these days to plainly say "my feelings are hurt." It triggers you because you were the fat, shameless asshole who basically fucked over some innocent person and ruined their flight because you can't put down the fucking fork.

You had to make the effort to come find the sub and read the article. The shitlord didn't make a scene on the airplane and demand to be reseated. The shitlord didn't call you a fat fuck to your face. No. It was all in his head, just waiting to be shared on a place where others are sympathetic to his pain and suffering. It's a place to vent. It's a place for people to drop the baggage that gets piled on when fat assholes ruin their fucking days (and often times for no other reason than because they're fat).

Imagine a world where things like /r/fatpeoplehate/ were banned. The likelihood that shitlords would lash out and force their opinions on fat people in real life instead of tucking them away in a place where they'd otherwise have to be searching to find it would be much higher than it is today. You talk about therapy? /r/fatpeoplehate/ is therapy.

It's a far fucking cry from racism. We're not advocating that fat people be enslaved, or hung from (very, very strong) trees for whistling at a thin person. We're not talking about all the hate crimes we're committing against fat people or telling others to do so.

We're sitting around circle jerking about how fat people disgust us. Do some of the posters take it too far? Yeah, some times. This is the internet. What else is new?

There have been suggestions that it's peopled with only young people. /r/fatlogic/ did a poll a while back and most of the contributors are in their 20's but quite a few are in their 30's which is old by reddit's standards. There's a lot of comorbidity between /r/fatlogic/ and /r/fatpeoplehate/ so it's not a perfect 1:1, but it's a decent approximation.

There's also been the suggestion that there's a lot of self-hatred being worked out in that sub.

I can't speak for everyone but I will share with you why I'm subbed to /r/fatpeoplehate/ and why I post there.

I'm 31. I'm married and have two sons, 4 and less than a year. After my first son was born, I went from shitlord material to basically morbidly obese - my exercise slowed and then stopped, we ate worse due to demands of parenting, and I drank more due to demands of parenting.

And I fucking hated myself. I hated my fat disgusting body. And this is nothing new - when you hate yourself, you drink more, you eat more, and you make it worse. Until one day I discovered /r/fatlogic/ and then /r/fatpeoplehate/. Those subs were about a million times more useful than the standard weight-loss sub, /r/loseit/.

It's hard for some people to fathom or relate to, but for people like me who are naturally inclined to be cynical, subs like /r/upliftingnews/ make us want to fucking puke. I'm banned from that sub, by the way. Likewise, /r/fatpeoplehate/ and the other related shitlord subreddits are like the yang to the /r/loseit/ yin. It's the dark side of the sticky tape.

/r/fatpeoplehate/ reminds me every day that all it takes is a little loss of discipline and I can go from a healthy, happy, fit person to a fat disgusting slob who hates himself.

And then there's another entire topic which I won't even get into which is raising my two sons. Fat acceptance infuriates me because I know that as a parent I have only so much stake in my child's life. He will be inundated with the American culture all the time. Once he hits 6 years old he'll be in school all the time and be exposed to the children of parents who don't give a shit, who are fat fucks, and who are raising their kids to be fat fucks too. God forbid he becomes friends with a fat kid and spends his time at fat kid's house eating fat disgusting food.

Why does it matter? I was fat until I hit puberty. Not obese, just chubby enough that I noticed. My middle school years sucked total ass. Fortunately I got my shit together in high school and college and had decent teenage years, but I know what it's like to be the fat kid with glasses. It sucked ass and I will not have my sons go through that if I can avoid it.

And I will have a very hard time avoiding it when 1 out of 3 people he sees in his life is a fat fuck and he's got hoards of people screaming at him that it's okay to be fat. I wouldn't be surprised if some goddamned landwhale like /r/ragenchastain/ gets invited to speak at his school about HAES or some other complete snakewater bullshit.

/r/fatpeoplehate/ is one of the few places on reddit where people are actually fighting back against that nonsense, and I want them to succeed. It is not okay to be fat, for any reason. /r/fatpeoplehate/ are the only people who are willing to actually take a fucking stand and actually stand up for what they believe in. Our culture is soaked with so much of this "thou shalt not judge" bullshit that it's extended to things like being wildly obese. Being wildly obese is more unhealthy than cigarette smoking, and yet we've got people saying it's perfectly fine to ruin your body, but light up a cigarette within 500 yards of a building? You're a monster.

For all of these reasons, I'm a shitlord, and I am not afraid to admit it.

/r/Negareddit Thread